Woody Heller on Investment Sales and New Demand for Lower Manhattan

The investment sales market, most brokers agree, has been heating up over the past 12 months. Approximately $25.8 billion in commercial properties changed hands last year, a turnaround that represented an 88 percent increase over 2010. But while the positive uptick is easily verifiable, what happens next for Manhattan’s investment sales market is still up in the air.

Accordingly, The Commercial Observer set out to speak with the real estate industry’s most accomplished capital markets and sales practitioners to learn what’s in store for 2012. Over the next several days, we’ll post interviews with heavy hitters like Richard Baxter of Jones Lang LaSalle, J.D. Parker of Marcus & Millichap, Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan of CBRE and Peter Hausperg of Eastern Consolidated. But, first, after the jump, none other than Woody Heller of Studley.

Woody Heller. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto)

The Commercial Observer: In 2011, there was quite a bit of activity between the second and third quarters, but then it became sluggish between the third and fourth. Why did that happen?
Mr. Heller: Well, let me say it this way: This is the first time that I’ve gone away for Christmas before Christmas, so …

Because you anticipated that slow down, or was something else brewing?
It was just the rhythm of the deals we were working on. So it could be completely personal to us, it could be symbolic to what was happening in the rest of the market. I think that it was less year-end-weighted than normal, but I still think it was a pretty powerful year. And I think that this year will continue to be very much the same, perhaps for slightly different reasons.

With regard to year-end sales activity, is it partly just the luck of the draw, or was something else influencing buyers and sellers last year?
I think a little bit luck of the draw. I also think the world began to feel very uncomfortable in August when the European debt crisis began to come into shape. So, there was a lot of uncertainty that came toward the end of the year, and you could argue that either way: either having made it better for real estate or worse for real estate. On the one side, uncertainty is great for real estate because it’s the absolute, you know, so when you’re scared, where are you going to put your money? And, if you’re a European guy and you think your currency is about to go to hell, or the whole economy is about to potentially implode, you want to pull stuff out and get it to a better spot.